People

 

Rex Nielson, Director of the Humanities Center

Rex P. Nielson is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of the BYU Humanities Center. His interests include literary and cultural studies, especially in relation to the Portuguese-speaking world. He has taught all levels of Portuguese language as well as a variety of courses on Luso-Afro-Brazilian literature and culture, as well as interdisciplinary courses for Latin American Studies, Africana Studies, Global Women’s Studies, and the BYU Honors Program. His research interests focus on (1) ecocriticism and environmental ethics in Brazil and the global south, (2) race and gender in Luso-Brazilian culture, (3) language and literature pedagogy, and (4) translation studies. He has served in various professional organizations, including as the President of the American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA) (2019–2020). Rex and his wife, Natalie, an adjunct professor in the Department of Comparative Arts and Letters, live in Provo and are the proud parents of five children.

Brooke Browne, Assistant Director of the Humanities Center

Brooke Browne originally joined the BYU Humanities Center in 2015, and she is excited to be back as the Assistant Director after a 2-year hiatus. She loved growing up at the base of the mountain in Mapleton where she now lives next door to her childhood home. She graduated from BYU with a BS in Home and Family Life and a minor in Music in 2003. She and her husband Jeremy (an Associate Research Professor in the Office of Digital Humanities) are the parents of 4 boys, with only 15-year-old twins at home. When she’s not dreaming of her favorite place (Paris), Brooke enjoys playing piano, baking, watching K-Drama, and cheering on the Cougars.

Ryan Hill, Assistant Academic Director

Ryan Hill grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC. Upon returning from his mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Rancagua, Chile, Ryan completed his BA in Latin American Studies and Spanish, along with a minor in music with an emphasis in Jazz Studies, at Brigham Young University (2013). He also holds an MA in Hispanic Literatures from BYU (2015) and a PhD in Hispanic Literatures and Cultures from Johns Hopkins University (2022). Ryan’s research interests lie in 20^th and 21^st century Latin American literature and culture, particularly Southern Cone. He will talk at length to anyone with an even passing interest in jazz and music, detective literature and film, food practices, nature and sport; all topics which serve as exciting avenues of further academic exploration. His current research centers on the connection between soccer and society in Latin America and Spain, exploring questions of nationality, violence, belonging, coloniality, and aesthetics as expressed in the wide-ranging narratives of the Luso-Hispanic soccer world. His dissertation, “Más que un juego: Lives at Play in the Hispanic Football Novel,” explores literary representations of soccer as a lens through which he analyzes how the game has served to perpetuate, subvert, and disrupt traditional political, economic and social power structures. Ryan and his wife, Chelsea Fuller Hill, have two children.

Brian Croxall, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2024 – 2027)

Brian Croxall is Associate Research Professor of Digital Humanities at Brigham Young University. His research interests include American and English literatures from the nineteenth century to the present; game, trauma, and media studies (not all together!); comic strips, especially Peanuts; and pedagogy. With Diane K. Jakacki, he is the co-editor of What We Teach When We Teach DH (2023), from the University of Minnesota Press. He is also the co-editor, with Rachel A. Bowser, of Like Clockwork: Steampunk Pasts, Presents, and Futures (2016, Minnesota). He has served in various national and international professional organizations, including as a member of both the Executive Council and Program Committee of the Modern Language Association.

Cherice Montgomery Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2023 – 2026)

Cherice Montgomery (Associate Professor of Spanish Pedagogy) coordinates the Spanish Teaching Major at BYU.  Her work explores the creative potential of design-based pedagogies and 21st century literacies for inspiring change in world language education.  Cherice’s current research investigates the nature and design of compelling learning experiences in immersive contexts such as Dual Language Immersion (DLI), Playable Case Study simulations (PCS), and Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL).  She has published in journals such as Foreign Language Annals, Die Unterrichtspraxis, Journal of Critical Inquiry into Curriculum and Instruction, and The Language Educator.  She serves on the NFLRC Advisory Board and frequently facilitates workshops and webinars. Cherice has been honored with several awards for excellence in teaching, including the UFLA Higher Education Teacher of the Year, the Douglas K. Christensen Teaching & Learning Faculty Fellowship, the ACTFL-NYSAFLT Anthony Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education, and the BYU Faculty Women’s Association Teaching Award.  Beyond academia, Cherice can be found birdwatching, cooking, or West Coast Swing dancing. 

Sara Phenix, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2023 – 2026)

Sara Phenix is Associate Professor of French. She earned her PhD in 2013 at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Dix-Neuf, and Romance Notes. Her current book project on the corset focuses on fashion, fertility, and fiction in nineteenth-century France.

 

Chris Rogers, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2023 – 2026)

Chris Rogers (Associate Professor, Linguistics) earned a B.A. in Spanish, an M.A. in Linguistics, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics (U of U) focusing on language documentation, description, typology, and the historical implications of each. In his research, he concentrates on the value of linguistic diversity both globally and individually focusing primarily on the indigenous languages of Central and South America (though he has worked with other language groups and hopes to collaborate with more communities around the world). In his teaching, Chris insists that his students “get dirty with data” instead of keeping it at arm’s length, by immersing themselves in the practice of doing linguistic analysis. Currently, his favorite things to talk about are gamification, information packaging, precategoriality, semantic alignment, and objective characterizations of linguistic diversity within a community’s linguistic ecosystem. If he isn’t in his office, Chris is probably in the backcountry or dancing with his wife, Sarah.

James Swensen, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2024-2027)

James Swensen is professor of art history and the history of photography at Brigham Young University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in 2009. His research interests include American photography, the art and photography of the American West, and the representation of pilgrimage. His work has appeared in History of Photography, TransAtlantica: Revue d’Études Américaines, American Indian Quarterly, and The European Journal of American Culture, among others. He is also the author of two monographs: Picturing Migrants: The Grapes of Wrath and New Deal Documentary Photography (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), and In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953-1954 (University of Utah Press, 2018), which won the Juanita Brooks Best Book Award from the Utah Historical Society in 2019. He also co-authored (with Farina King and Mike Taylor) Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School, published by the University of Arizona Press in 2021.

Stephen Tuttle, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2023 – 2026)

Stephen Tuttle is an associate professor of English. He teaches courses in creative writing and American literature, with scholarly interests in the short story, microfiction, and prose poetry. Among other assignments, he has served on the Faculty Advisory Committee and as associate chair of English.

 

Matthew Ancell, One-Year Faculty Fellow

Matthew Ancell received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Irvine, and is now Associate Professor of Humanities and Section Head of Comparative Literature at Brigham Young University. His research interests include the Baroque in Spain and Italy, early-modern skepticism, and deconstruction. He has published articles on Luis de Góngora, Calderón de la Barca, Diego Velázquez, and Jacques Derrida in venues such as Oxford Art Journal, Hispanic Review, Renaissance Drama, The Comparatist, Montaigne Studies, and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. Currently, he is writing a monograph on Calderón de la Barca.

Aaron Eastley, One-Year Faculty Fellow

Aaron Eastley is Associate Professor of English. He holds a PhD from the University of California at San Diego, and specializes in transnational literatures in English, British Modernism, and diaspora and globalization studies. He is the Honors Coordinator for English and taught Honors Unexpected Connections courses from 2017-2022. His scholarship has appeared in venues such as the Journal of Caribbean Literatures, ARIEL, the Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, Twentieth-Century Literature, and Research in African Literatures. His current interests center on the Caribbean and Wales. Over the past several years he has collaborated with colleagues in Trinidad to put together a collection of the journalism of Seepersad Naipaul that come out from Peepal Tree Press in March 2024. He is also currently working on a biography of the Welsh poet and former BYU professor Leslie Norris.

Kathryn Charles, Humanities Center Intern

Kathryn Cragun is the 2024-2025 BYU Humanities Center Intern. Raised in a small farming community near Tremonton, Utah, Kathryn nurtured her early love of literature during long bus rides to school, always with her nose in a book. Now a senior majoring in English with a minor in editing, she can’t help but love British Romantic writers, poetry that makes her weep, and contemporary realistic fiction. Her favorite author is Fredrik Backman. Currently, Kathryn is a PR writer on the award-winning communications team at the Marriott School of Business. She has edited for AWE: A Women’s Experience, the student-run Global Women’s Studies journal, and consulted with hundreds of writers at the Research and Writing Center—one of her favorite spots on campus. Some of Kathryn’s recent favorite experiences include serving a mission in Hawaii, teaching preschool in Thailand, and honeymooning in Paris.

Mabel Court, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Mabel Court is a senior studying Interdisciplinary Humanities with minors in Global Women’s Studies and Family Life. She is originally from Mesa, Arizona, and although she misses her family (including a somber dog and three cats), she loves living near the mountains. Mabel is a tutor at the Research and Writing Center, where she enjoys helping all types of students discover the joy of writing and participating in research about multilingual writing intervention. She also helps run an independent student publication that focuses on highlighting underrepresented voices in Provo and spends her free time going on walks or weight training. As she approaches graduation, Mabel is so grateful for the expansive education she has received in the humanities and can’t wait to apply her skills and passion to whatever comes next.

Sophie Hirtle, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Sophie Hirtle is a senior from Medford, Oregon studying Comparative Literature and French Studies, with a minor in Global Women’s Studies. Her love for literature largely developed in middle school as she completed edible book reports, designed Shakespearean influenced costumes, and reenacted theater scenes in a creative thinking course. These formative experiences resulted in her passion for interdisciplinary and intersectional studies, and she plans on getting her PhD with a focus on female authors in the late 1800s and early 1900s from the Lusophone, Anglophone, and Francophone traditions. Currently, she serves as the Academic Liaison for the Global Women’s Studies Honor Society and as president for Pi Delta Phi. She also teaches a Portuguese course for the university and hopes to become an official professor one day.

Kaden Nelson, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Kaden is a senior from Hurricane, Utah majoring in English literary studies with a minor in music. He developed a passion for reading and literary discussions while taking AP literature his senior year of high school, where he fell in love with many of the canonical English texts. He is the president and co-founder of BYU’s first student poetry club, Poets Society, as well as a contributing writer for Prodigal Press, a student-run media collective based in Provo. He works as a tutor at BYU’s Research & Writing Center, where he helps students refine their writing skills and practices. Kaden’s research interests include poetry, religion, colonial studies, secular/post-secular studies, and Romantic and Victorian British literature. He plans to pursue a PhD in English literature so he can teach his favorite poems and authors at a university someday. Outside of work and school, Kaden enjoys exploring the outdoors of Utah (and elsewhere) with friends and family, listening to his favorite musicians, and playing the guitar and piano.

Coleman Numbers, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Coleman Numbers is a senior majoring in English and minoring in Japanese and Digital Humanities. As a native Utahn and a long-time resident of Tennessee, he has a soft spot for big and small mountains; besides hiking, he loves to write long-form science fiction and play the drums. His main research interest is the role of astronomy in early modern British literature. Coleman was part of the founding team of Mindsmith, an AI startup that began in the Marriott School’s Sandbox incubator. He has written and edited for Y Magazine and is now a tutor at the Research and Writing Center. He also serves as an officer for BYU’s creative writing club, Y Fiction. In every part​ of his life, he is grateful to be inspired by the ingenuity of others.

Sydney Jo Pedersen, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Sydney is a senior studying Applied English Linguistics and French.  Although she grew up all over the Western United States, she claims Washington as home.  She plans to pursue a master’s degree in Second Language Acquisition with hopes of improving second language education in public schools.  Last Winter, Sydney worked as the curriculum designer and coordinator for a program teaching English to university students visiting from South Korea.  She spent the summer in Ecuador studying Kichwa and interning as an EFL curriculum designer and teacher.  Aside from her passion for languages, Sydney loves trail running, classic literature, jazz and musical theater.  She jumps at every opportunity to be on stage, whether as a vocalist, a violinist, or an actress.

Starly Pratt, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Starly Pratt is a senior majoring in English Literary Studies with minors in Family Life and Creative Writing. Though Starly is an avid reader of any book you’d put in front of her, her favorite one to study and research is American literature written in the gothic style. She plans on pursuing graduate school to write into the American canon she has come to love. Starly is an editor and contributor for the student journal AWE: A Woman’s Experience and is also the intern for the Faith and Imagination Institute for which she produces a podcast that discusses the intersection between literature and Christian spirituality. She’s from North Carolina and misses spending every day at the beach, but she claims that the beautiful Wasatch mountains make up for it and likes to spend as much time in them as possible. Her other hobbies include traveling, walking her dog, and playing tennis.